Day to day mutterings and observations of a thirty-something serial thinker with far too much time on his hands.

Monday, April 25, 2005

Don't mess with the sea.

You see, I’ve never understood the attraction of scuba diving. I’ve always been of the opinion that there is no pleasure that being under the water can give me that would make up for the displeasure that I would get by being stung or bitten by one of it’s usual inhabitants, that or popping an eardrum. OK, I bet it’s nice, peaceful and scenic but I’d rather just stay out of it and have my usual daily burning by the sun if it’s all the same. Sunburn I know how to handle.

This view was emphasised in poetic fashion when I was awoken from my daily frazzling appointment on the beach by the big red thing in the sky by the undignified ‘yelp’ of a man. A man in the sea. A man in the sea yelping. This didn’t look good.

On closer inspection it appeared that the man in the sea from which the ‘yelp’ emanated was the man who occupied one of the two frazzling beds beside CJ and I, the other one was occupied by his partner. Who was now looking on rather concerned.

I’d worked out through process of deduction that he was of Eastern European origin. My deducting process being that he didn’t have blonde hair so he wasn’t Scandinavian, he wasn’t being overtly loud for no reason so he wasn’t American, he wasn’t playing cricket and being loud so he wasn’t Australian, but he did have tight Speedo’s on so in the absence of any other countries in the world he was therefore probably Eastern European, possibly Russian. Which bothered me no end, especially now as I couldn’t work out what was happening.

He was also a bit of a fidget, I’d observed him earlier in the day spending a good 30 minutes clearing the surrounding area of bits of tree, weed and bottles washed in by the tide. This was frowned on somewhat by Old Mother Sea who had obviously not taken to kindly to someone clearing up her own back yard and had paid him back sea style:

"Next time sonny leave the clearing up to me. Have a sting of that, get out of my sea and don’t fanny around with my rubbish again" I could swear I heard the waves say.

He did walk out of the sea, which was harder than it sounds due to the current, holding his right arm straight. And made his way up to the food cart proprietors behind us who made lots of oohing and aahing noises, which obviously meant: ‘get your stuff together, you’re going somewhere where the nosy bastard on the bed next to you doesn’t know where, or why’, and with that they did. Went. Without telling me what was happening. Bastards. I hoped his bloody Russian arm fell off.

But this had deeper, more far reaching consequences than just some Russian guys arm. Earlier in the day, we had booked a couple of days scuba diving trip. It was a trip for CJ masquerading as my birthday present. CJ is an expert diver. I am not. We were going into the sea that had just bitten that man.

And now I’d had seen what was waiting for me in the sea. I wasn’t too sure anymore.